Radiant Comics

Somedays it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. That’s the cliché and we all know what it means. But some days I’m not even looking for pay when I get out of bed. I’m just looking for things to go right. Break my way if you will. That’s what I want. A day when everything comes up roses. Wouldn’t that be nice? Sweet chocolate mountain I’d pay money for that! Except I fear that type of day can be wasted if I’ve got nothing going on. Think about it. It could go by without me even noticing.

What happens if I finally get that elusive day when everything goes right and I got zero to do that day. Or worse, nothing to do but work. I wouldn’t even notice that everything went right because there was nothing but banality to the day. Another of the dangers of the banal. I’ve never been a fan of boredom. It’s an enemy like no other.

Now, a day when things go bad just sucks. No way around that. You don’t need to be doing anything on that kind of day. You can be minding your own business sitting in a chair doing nothing but napping and if things go bad you’ll know it. Hell, you can fall out of the chair and break your arm. Bad luck makes itself known in a way that good luck can’t match. Sneaky bastage.

Bad luck doesn’t need anything but itself. It’s self sufficient. Meanwhile good luck needs something to act on. If you’re sitting in a chair all day what’s good luck going to do for you? Make sure the chair doesn’t fly into space? Nope. That’s not luck that’s gravity. Good luck needs you to be walking down the street so a dollar can blow against your shoe or some such. It tends to be more subtle than bad luck. So subtle it’s easy to miss if you have nothing going on.

Good luck needs opportunity and bad luck doesn’t. That’s what’s annoying me today. I’m mourning opportunities lost and the loss of opportunity. All the while that bugaboo called bad luck keeps right on truckin’. Filth flarn, filth flarn. As you can probably tell I’m feeling a little hostile towards the world today. But on to better things.

There, there, wait a moment I’m trying to think of better things.

Nope. Got nothing for you today.

I had some bad luck with buying some blank DVDs. I bought a bunch of Memorex DVDs that are supposed to be “up to 16x speed” but for some reason they only burn at about 5x on my burner. That means instead of taking five minutes it takes fifteen to burn a disk. And I bought a hundred pack of them. Oy! All the other “up to 16x speed” DVDs I’ve ever had have burned at 16x speed. I don’t know what’s up with Memorex. Just a bit of bad luck.

Sometimes things, objects I mean, can briefly make one forget about bad luck. That’s what our whole consumer society is based on. For example: I got a new iPod case. That’s kinda cool. It’s leather and it flips open to reveal the screen. It’s a nicely crafted little thing and makes me smile. Bad luck be damned; a good craftsman can outwit ‘cha!

Getting tasks done can fly in the face of bad luck. I just finished labeling and editing a bunch of my photos that I loaded onto said iPod. I’m glad that’s done but it offered me little opportunity for luck.

Hmmm… maybe inspiration is what I need today. Can luck bring inspiration or does inspiration bring luck? I don’t know. But these are the questions that run through my mind. Later gator.

Let’s here it for Apple’s “Migration Assistant”. It isn’t needed very often but when it is it really does the job. Y’see I decided to upgrade to Apple’s new “Leopard” operating system (OS 10.5). It wasn’t an easy decision because it involved some hardware changes for me. Well, that and money. I’m not made of the stuff.

I’m running a 2002 Dual 1 Ghz Quicksilver model. I’ve already upgraded it many times over the years and it has two internal hard drives. The original stock 80 gig drive and a second 250 gig drive. I run the operating system off of the 80 gig drive and the other is set up with a clean and basic back up operating system in case I have problems and have to trouble shoot. The problem is that the 80 gig drive is just about full. As an artist who scans in a lot of my stuff and also dabbles in photography I can really fill up a drive. I’m not sure if there was even room to install OS 10.5. I’d be pushing the envelope.

Buying a new internal hard drive was part of my decision making process. Had to be done as part of the OS upgrade. It drove the price of upgrading up but in the end I decided I needed a new internal hard drive anyway so away I went. I ordered a 250 gig internal hard drive, a USB enclosure for the old internal drive, and Leopard. Then I waited until the end of the week after all my work was done to do an install.

The first thing I had to do was open my machine up and pull out the hard drives. The top hard drive (250 gig) came out easy enough. After all I put it in so I knew how to take it out. The primary hard drive (80 gig) was a little trickier. It took me a few minutes to find the screw that held it in. It was under the cable that connected to the drive. I only found it by looking underneath the computer’s tower case and seeing a bottom bolt. Once found it came out easy. So I made the old 250 gig drive the primary drive and the new one the secondary drive. Then it was a reboot and I had to format the drive. Piece of cake.

I had one bad run at installing OS 10.5. It was my own fault because you’re not supposed to install an operating system with peripherals attached to it and I tried to install from a peripheral. Yeah, Yeah, I know, but I always use my external 16x DVD drive because it’s so my faster the the original 2x internal drive. And as I figured the install went faster. Until it failed. Then I unplugged everything and tried again from the internal DVD drive. Everything went fine but slower. Install was successful.

This is where Migration Assistant comes in. Since I was installing on a totally new hard drive none of my previous information was there. But I had purchased a USB enclosure and put the old 80 gig drive into it and now I plugged that into my tower (as an external hard drive). I fired up the migration program and it spotted the external drive and asked if I wanted to copy over my user information. I said yes and it copied all of my documents, applications, passwords, settings, and you name its. This took about two hours as there was about 70 gigs worth of stuff. But, wow, does it save time. I had to set up next to nothing. It was all there just as I left it and ready to go.

When I fired up the old beast all I had to do was update a couple of things. The Wacom tablet seems to be the one thing that always needs a driver update with each new system. Luckily there was one so I downloaded it and things were good. I checked my scanner and printer. Those are the two big things I had to get working and they’re doing fine (big ups to VueScan software). The whole upgrade took me from about 4 PM until 8:30 PM. I ate dinner in there too so it wasn’t too long.

One strange thing was that even though I had administer privileges I had to type a password to write to my primary 250 gig drive (the old one). I hit “command I” to get info on the drive and though I could give myself write privileges to individual folders I couldn’t give myself write privileges for the whole drive. I had to tell the computer to “ignore ownership” of the drive in order to give myself unfettered access to it. I didn’t have to do this with my external drives though. Weird.

I can’t give any kind of review of Leopard yet since I’ve barely used it but my review of the Migration Assistant program is ten out of ten stars. Man does it take the pain out of upgrading. You can even use it if you are buying a new computer. As long as the old and new computers have Firewire (though my external hard drive was USB 2 and that worked fine) you can connect them together and copy everything from the old one onto the new one. It make things painless. I like painless.

Crap. It’s the end of my bike riding season. For outdoor bike riding that is. Time to move things inside to the stationary bike. Blech! I hate the stationary bike. What rider doesn’t? It’s too boring. I’d much rather be outside riding the real thing with the air and scenery going by. But now it’s getting too cold. I hate riding a bike in the cold. Besides being real cold it saps my strength like you wouldn’t believe. My last ride was earlier this week and it was 38º F out. I had to cut it short. It was too much effort to ride. Exhausting. I was tired after that short ride. I pushed through on a cold ride a couple of days earlier and payed the price of fatigue for the rest of the day. Can’t do that anymore.

Mornings are my time to exercise so I have a tough time waiting for the afternoons to roll around when the day warms up a little. I could ride for a couple of more weeks in the afternoons but I have much less energy in the afternoons. Besides it doesn’t warm up that much because these autumn winds are cold. I even got myself a windbreaker this year and it works well. It’s much warmer with it on but the cold still saps my strength. I wasn’t actually too cold but too weak. I guess when the body’s energy has to be used to keep warm there is less of it for the legs. I’d have to warm up a lot first to keep my strength up. That would take even more time.

There is also something to be said about the psychological factor of winter coming compared to spring. Cycling in the cold of the early spring is easier because I know that the mornings will be getting warmer day by day. That’s something to look forward to. In the winter it’s the opposite. I keep wondering, “Is this the day that will be too cold?”. That’s a distraction. You don’t want those out on the road. Snow, ice, and wind aren’t very good either. It can be tough to cycle in a warm wind and in a cold one near impossible.

So now I’ll sit in one place and pedal. I’ll watch some TV while I do this but that still doesn’t make it very interesting. It’s less exercise in the same amount of time too. When I’m out on the road I go up some pretty big hills. I can turn the resistance up on the stationary bike and pedal harder but it’s not the same. It takes more effort but less concentration to go up a real hill on a real bike. After all, I have no choice. I have to keep going or I won’t get home. My legs will keep on pedaling even if I’m not as focused as I could be. On the stationary bike if I get a little tired and lose concentration I can just stop pedaling or turn down the resistance. And it’s easy to lose concentration when you’re going no where.

I think I’ll start hitting the stationary bike in the morning and taking a walk in the afternoon. After all my bike ride also serves to get me out of the house and away from the computer screen or the drawing board for a while. Otherwise I’m inside all day and that can lead to a bit of cabin fever. Especially in the winter time. And here comes the ol’ papa winter to say hello.

I am a big fan of mint. From the plant grown in the ground to all the stuff flavored by it I dig it all. As long as it’s good and minty.

For a long time I was a big Altoids fan. I discovered them in the early 90’s before they were widely available. They only place I ever saw them in those days was in little tobacco shops around Manhattan. It’s a wonder I found them at all being that I don’t smoke but I think I wandered in there with a friend who did. The “Curiously Strong” slogan caught my eye and I bought some. Good stuff. The first of the strong stuff flavored with real mint.

I say I was an Altoids fan because I don’t eat them much anymore. A few years ago I started finding them curiously weak. All the tins I purchased were stale and wimpy. It didn’t matter what store I bought them in they weren’t any good. I don’t know if it’s because they changed them or that quality control has gone down hill. Either way I’m off of them. It’s a shame really because they were so good. A lot of my friends still find them good so maybe I have gotten quite a few bad tins. Who knows? It’s enough to keep me away though.

White Tic Tacs are also a favorite of mine. They’re changed their recipe over the years but I still like them. They’re one of the only “sugar mints” that I like. Except they have a strange after taste. That leads to eating mint after mint because the beginning taste is better. I do find that if I eat two white with one red (cinnamon) Tic Tac it improves the flavor all around. I carry a box of them with just that ratio when I’m out.

I’m not really a gum person but I have been chewing some mint gum lately. The explosion of super strong mints that Altoids lead a decade ago found its way into the gum world recently. They now have a variety of super minty gums. I’ve been chewing Eclipse brand and I’ve tried a few others that are good too. The flavor lasts a while and even reaches to the edge of my chewing patience. About fifteen minutes or so. That’s longer lasting flavor than the typical mint.

If you’re a real fan of mint you have to try the Tom’s of Maine spearmint mouthwash. I use their toothpaste, which also comes in a variety of natural mint flavors, and one tube came with a sample of the afore mentioned mouthwash. It’s strong with a natural spearmint kick that will get you going. I was never a mouthwash user but I keep some of this stuff around because it tastes so good.

And now a word on the mints I don’t like. “Sugar mints”. They’re the kind, like Lifesavers, that have been around for years. They say they’re mint flavored but they are really sugar flavored with some mint thrown in. I’m glad Altoids changed the mint landscape because this used to be all we had.

I also can’t stand all of the “chemical mints” that have proliferated since Altoids. These mints are supposed to be super strong but don’t contain any actual mint. They’re made from some chemical flavoring that tries to mimic mint but just tastes artificial to me. Usually these are found in some gimmicky packaging and the mints are an afterthought.

Wintergreen mints. These are not real mints. They’re the original chemical mint but they’re been around so long that people accept them as one of the basic mint flavors. I never could stand these. They taste like they were made in a lab to me. I’ve also noticed that this is the favorite mint of people who don’t like mints. I guess that makes sense being that it’s not a real mint but I’ve always found that odd.

Who would have thunk that I’d have so many thought on mints? Just another little bit of insight into being me.

Let me continue the tale of my new iPod Touch that I started last week. After I set it up with all of my photos I began to load all of my little digital camera videos from over the years. Nothing long; just short movies of friends and family at parties, gatherings and outings. I had already converted them to mp4’s (the video format that iPods use) but that’s when things got confusing. You can’t sync folders of video like you can photos. Apple assumes all the videos you will load onto your iPod are movies, TV shows, or music videos. You have to use iTunes to organize those and there is no section for home video. This is where iTunes really lets me down. I can see how adding video organization to iTunes was an afterthought.

First off I loaded the video into iTunes but since they are my home videos there is no metadata in them for iTunes to read. So I had to enter all the information about my video (date, place, event, people) into the iTunes song info slots. That took a little adapting on my part (making the album name the date of the photo) but I got it all entered and things lined up right. I copied them onto the iPod and that’s when things went haywire. Organizational wise that is.

The first thing I noticed was orientation. Like my photos sometimes I take movies horizontally and sometimes vertically. But the movie always comes off the memory card horizontal. No problem. I just rotate the movie clockwise and nobody is on their side. When I saved all of my movies as mp4’s I rotated them to the correct orientation. When viewing them in iTunes everything was fine. The vertical ones were vertical and the horizontal ones were horizontal. But when I looked at then on the iPod it had turned all of the vertical ones horizontal. That’s horizontal across the small width of the iPod. They were tiny and not watch-able. Especially compared to the nice big horizontal ones.

I did a quick test and sure enough the iPod auto-detects which movies are vertical and reorients them. But iTunes, which I have to manage the video with, doesn’t! I had to go back and re-save the vertical ones horizontal. Now I have two copies of each of them in iTunes one vertical for iTunes and one horizontal for the iPod. Annoying. Maybe there is some preference buried in iTunes to handle this but I couldn’t find it.

Once that was done I noticed that the organization wasn’t what I wanted it to be. The movies were arranged by date (which I had in the album name slot) but none of them were arranged into folders like an album is when they’re music files. All the videos were in one big list. I went back into iTunes and dug around. It turns out there is another tab named “video” amongst the music info. There are only five fields there for show name, episode ID, season number, episode number, and a pull down to indicate TV, movie, or music video. Hmmm…

I decided to name the show as the date the video was taken, the episode ID with the event, and make them all “TV Shows” in the pull down menu. Oh, by the way, there were 121 videos I had to do this for. That’s after already filling in the song metadata for all of them and then refilling in that data on the about thirty of them that I had to re-save as horizontal. What a pain. But when I put them on the iPod they were all in folders lined up by their dates.

Another stranger thing is that the names on the iPod video folders (the date taken) is actually the name of the album from the iTunes song data not the TV show name from the iTunes video data. I only know this because a couple of times I put a person’s name after the date taken in the iTunes “show name” data field and that name didn’t show up in the folder name on the iPod. I put that name after the date taken in the iTunes “album name” data field and sure enough it showed in the folder name. Weird. I’d think it would use the video data first for a video.

After all that extra organizing time I was glad to get everything on the iPod. Y’know, the thing is great for watching my videos. Little moments in time captured and brought back. I think I like watching them on the iPod better than the computer screen. Part of it is that they seem more precious and intimate and part of it is the sound. With my nice pair of head phones I noticed the sound is pretty good on those little videos. It moves well as the people are moving. The sound doesn’t come across nearly as well on my desktop even with my nice computer speakers.

Organizational issues aside, and they are considerable, I think the iPod Touch is a great machine for viewing both photos and video. Plus it plays music too did you know? Once Apple gets the memory on them up to about 60 gigs I’ll really be thrilled.